Speaking of self-discipline and judgement
Vile colleagues part 3: Dear Professor Byrne
It was alleged in May that you were among the anonymous authors of the HHS report on pediatric trans care. The report, among other things, issues the alarming recommendation that trans youth should not have access to gender-affirming care, despite the leading pediatric medical body in the country supporting the efficacy and life-saving potential of these treatments. [1]
In light of your recent confirmation [2] of these allegations, we as your colleagues at MIT, in philosophy, and in higher-education feel it necessary to speak out.
They’re not actually his colleagues. Most of them are grad students. Some are colleagues, but not most.
[S]ince 1966, the AAUP has also agreed on a Statement on Professional Ethics. [5] Per this 1966 Statement, professors are obligated to “exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge” and to “practice intellectual honesty”. We take this to mean that as academics, we also have a responsibility to the public to not misconstrue the scope of our expertise, nor comment in our capacity as academics on issues where we lack the requisite expertise. It is, of course, compatible with professional academic ethics to express one’s views publicly, even when one is not an expert, i.e., one might lobby for a particular candidate or write an op-ed in a newspaper. But contributing to a document as an expert in an area in which one is not an expert is contrary to professional standards.
What is expertise when it comes to trans ideology?
To the extent that it’s a psychiatric issue I can believe there are some experts (along with a lot of pseudo experts), but to the extent that it’s a political or ideological issue, philosophers are well qualified to wade in. These days it’s a lot more political/ideological than medical. Remember, anyone who says xir is trans is trans, end of discussion, don’t you dare ask questions. That means there can’t possibly be a “you are a mere amateur” barrier to discussion of the politics and ideology.
Given your lack of the requisite expertise, we believe it is inappropriate for you to engage in the shaping of national medical policy on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Familiarity with theories of gender made from the armchair does not equip one to make expert judgments about the quality of medical studies, nor about the lived experiences and needs of trans youth and their families.
And do they say the same thing to trans youth and their families? And to all the cheerleaders of trans youth and their families? No, of course they don’t. It’s only dissenters who have no right to utter a peep on the subject.
In contributing to a medical report that will have significant negative impacts on the lives of trans youth across this country, we believe that you have failed to uphold your responsibility as an academic to provide expert testimony only on matters included in your domain of expertise.
He’s a philosopher. Their expertise is in probing ideas and truth-claims to make sure they’re not blobs of cotton candy.
Collaboration with the Current Presidential Administration. The past few months have witnessed the Trump administration engage in the kidnapping of international graduate students from the streets, the deportation of innocent people to dangerous foreign prisons without due process, the cutting of lifesaving aid to millions across the world, and the undermining of the independence of colleges and universities across the country. We find these actions appalling, unethical, and undemocratic.
Of course none of that has anything whatever to do with you but by god we’re going to pretend it does.
For these reasons, we believe it is deeply myopic for any academic to collaborate with the Trump administration in this moment, regardless of one’s particular views about gender. However misguided one may think “gender ideology” is, it is simply unconscionable to for that reason, make common cause with an administration so engaged.
The Trump administration knows that fire burns, therefore it is simply unconscionable for anyone to agree that fire burns.
So there you go. It’s an embarrassingly stupid document, signed mostly by grad students. Give it a Bronx cheer and be done with it.
I just ordered his book. Seems like the best thing to do in the circumstances…and it sounds interesting.
Would that not also apply to supporting and promoting trans ideology? Is it possible to be an expert in lies and bullshit, in “care” that harms, and has no basis in reality? Do the signers of this letter themselves possess the knowledge base to know that this stuff actually works? And how could they know when the “practioners” themselves are in the dark? (See below.)
Then exactly the same charge should be levelled at those who instituted the current policies on “gender-affirming care for trans youth” in the first place. Hello; the existence of desistance, of detransitioners, the untreated comorbidities, the lifelong “gender journeys”, and the basic fact that nobody is “born into the wrong body,” should make any unbiased observer question if “gender affirming care” is on as solid a footing as it imagines itself to be.
If the phenomenon you’re claiming to be addressing is somewhere between “undefinable” and “nonexistent”, then how can you begin to treat it? Any success you might have is going to be purely accidental. Your patient’s suffering is real, but if you’re approaching it through a false framework or hypothesis, then you might as well join the astrologers and exorcists for all the “expertise” you might think you possess. But then astrologers don’t go around drugging, mutilating, and sterilizing children, which is what “gender affirming care for youth” results in. Gender medicine is more like exorcism. It too is centered on the unscientific, religiously motivated torture of mentally troubled people, supposedly possessed by entities that do not exist, whose actual ailments cannot be “cured” by the “experts” treating them. Undoing a harmful practice that has no sound theoretical footing or clear etiology doesn’t require any expertise in the bogus rationale used to prop it up. Just stopping it is a useful, valuable first step, because it ends further harm.
Your concern at someone contributing to a “report” is touching, but comes at the wrong end of all of this. How much of this train wreck was ever governed by anything “appropriate”, and why did you wait until now to become so goddamn self-righteous? Where was all that supposed knowledge when these “procedures” first started taking hold? Where is the definition of “gender identity” upon which any such treatment must be founded? Where were the studies? Where was the follow up? Where was the screening? Where was the caution and critical examination you would expect to see when such totalizing medical procedures are proposed? Where was the honesty in relaying what was possible – and what was not? What was being promised, and was it even possible? (Hint:, nobody in history has been the recipient of a functioning neo “vagina” or neo “penis”.) Where was the evidence of efficacy beyond hand-waving and wishful thinking?
And what of the abominable treatment meted out to anyone from outside the self-reinforcing bubble of the gender-industrial complex who dared to address any of these shockingly huge knowledge gaps, or address the laxity in standards and practices of “gender medicine”? They got more than strongly-worded open letters. Some people lost their jobs, just as you’re gunning for Byrne’s job.
Exactly. Critics are evil people who want to hurt and kill “trans kids.” Case closed, no appeals.
Obviously: rote memorization of dogma, including the list of things to say or not say and the people to hate or not hate, combined with an eagerness to immediately and totally revise all of that entirely on any trans person’s say.
I mean, obviously that’s what expertise is.
FIFY
If you want to model the principles of academic ethics, the first principle is: be honest. Don’t lie. Without that first principle, none of the other precepts matter.
You don’t need any expertise, academic or otherwise, to know that there are two sexes, and that males are not female.
You hide behind the empty phrase “gender affirming care.” You really should be required — you know, to comply with your own code of ethics, i.e., to “exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge” and to “practice intellectual honesty” — to lay out exactly what “gender affirming care” for minors consists of. It’s off-label use of drugs to halt the normal development of a child into an adult. That can have permanent consequences, depriving the patient of their one and only opportunity to achieve full maturation of body and brain It’s the pipeline into other medicalization of children with wrong sex hormones. For adolescent girls, it’s elective and unnecessary double mastectomy, removing healthy tissues for purely cosmetic reasons. For some, it means experimental surgery to mimic (poorly) the external genital organs of the opposite sex. The creation of neogenitalia through surgery often has complications, requiring further surgeries, further pain, further recovery time, all futile in effect. None of these measures will ever succeed in changing the sex of the patient.
Exercise a little honesty and integrity yourselves.
So, the MIT philosophy department thinks that philosophers lack expertise to comment on bioethics or medical ethics? If the philosophy department isn’t competent to opine on ethics, why keep it open? Just shut it down and leave the informed consent decisions to MDs, like Dr. Mengele or the Tuskegee experimenters.
@1 same – I’d never heard of him or the book before this; I hope the letter has a Streisand effect.
Too right, guest. They are bringing him good attention. If that many graduate students are mad at somebody, he must be doing something right.
Maybe he should add the letter as a preface to the next edition of his book to thank them.
Here is a list of Professor Alex Byrne’s papers: http://www.alexbyrne.org/papers.html
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